IT WAS DARK and Jehan couldn’t see anything, although she could sensesomething happening outside her apartment. Jehan, a mother of five childrenfrom Jabalia a populated town just North of Gaza city, had been woken whenthe firing started.

Holy Week (Semana Santa) is one of the biggest holidays in Costa Rica, most businesses are closed for the entire week. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are national holidays in Costa Rica. A Mass and procession leading up to Easter Sunday taking place in San Jose, Costa Rica. (Photo / Mark Pearson)

Holy Week Costa Rica

Holy Week (Semana Santa) is one of the biggest holidays in Costa Rica, most businesses are closed for the entire week. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are national holidays in Costa Rica. A Mass and procession leading up to Easter Sunday taking place in San Jose, Costa Rica. (Photo / Mark Pearson)

Holy Week Costa Rica

Holy Week (Semana Santa) is one of the biggest holidays in Costa Rica, most businesses are closed for the entire week. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are national holidays in Costa Rica. A Mass and procession leading up to Easter Sunday taking place in San Jose, Costa Rica. (Photo / Mark Pearson)

Holy Week Costa Rica

Holy Week (Semana Santa) is one of the biggest holidays in Costa Rica, most businesses are closed for the entire week. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are national holidays in Costa Rica. A Mass and procession leading up to Easter Sunday taking place in San Jose, Costa Rica. (Photo / Mark Pearson)

Holy Week (Semana Santa) is one of the biggest holidays in Costa Rica, most businesses are closed for the entire week. Holy Thursday and Good Friday are national holidays in Costa Rica. A Mass and procession leading up to Easter Sunday taking place in San Jose, Costa Rica. (Photo / Mark Pearson)

I visited Ramallah before heading on a hell assignment to Gaza after Operation Cast Lead. My Palestinian friends took me across the Qalandiya checkpoint from East Jerusalem to Ramallah. I was amazed by the amount of art on the Palestinian side of the wall, then I started to notice loads of work by reclusive British street artist Banksy, and this was one of his designs which was on the separation wall near the Qalandiya checkpoint.

And now, Banksy has made a new image that has been projected onto various international landmarks on the 13 March, 2014. The image was projected onto Nelson's Column and the Eiffel tower to mark the third anniversary of the ongoing conflict in Syria.

The image will promote the #withsyria campaign to support the victims of the conflict.

Banksy released a statement on his website: "On the 6th March 2011 in the Syrian town of Daraa, fifteen children were arrested and tortured for painting anti-authoritarian graffiti. The protests that followed their detention led to an outbreak of violence across the country that would see a domestic uprising transform into a civil war displacing 9.3 million people from their homes."

A Buddhist monk scans the wreckage of a train called " the queen of the sea " hit and derailed by a series of Tsunamis that hit Sri Lankas coastal regions on the 26th December, 2004. (Photo/Mark Pearson)

On Boxing day, 2004, an earthquake in the Indian ocean caused the deadliest tsunami and natural disaster in recorded history, killing 250,000 people in 11 countries. At that time I was employed as a press photographer covering news for the nationals in the South West of England. Tom Henderson, the founder of a small charity in Cornwall called me within hours of it happening. He asked: “Will you go and oversee the aid being deployed in Sri Lanka?”

I surf and still have a huge affiliation with the sea, I’ve spent most of my life looking at the horizon, waiting on the next swell so I was up for it. Even at the risk of getting sacked. Fuck it, I was on a mission to help people, and so was he.

I was employed by a press agency at that time, and they supplied all my kit which included all the digital Nikons, laptops and transmission gear. These guys refused to let me go. So I took my holiday leave and left all their digital gear at home. I grabbed my Leica M6 with a 35mm f2.0 lens and fifty rolls of Fuji 400 colour film, and got on the next available flight to Colombo.

The drive to Heathrow was a lonely experience. It was Hogmanay when I arrived in Sri Lanka. I had left everything at home, including my girlfriend and my family to help people in a country I had never been to before. I was risking everything with Apex and the Western Morning News, but it was the most liberating experience, I felt free and I was taking a risk. I had no digital gear, just an old Leica and some film. I was on a survival mission, but with emergency kit that could help people who’s lives had been wrecked just days before.

The rest is for another story, but what I am getting at here is that I used film in the jungle, and it was for months. I operated alone in LTTE controlled areas. I stayed in a hospital with tsunami victims. That was the only accommodation available. Not a great experience.

Almost ten years later, here I am in 2014, scanning the first batch of negatives at Falmouth University on a Hasselblad flextight scanner. The first scan I did was of the worst train crash in recorded history, near Galle. Over 1,500 people died on that train when they were moving South on Boxing Day. So here is the first professional scan of one image in thousands that I have never published until now.

A young girl who was seriously injured from the earthquake receiving surgery outside the General Hospital, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, January 15, 2010. More than 230,000 are believed to have died in the earthquake, and more than a million were made homeless. (Photo / Mark Pearson)

We were only into the first fortnight of the new year and this huge earthquake had just struck Haiti, the disaster scramble had started. It was my role to get there as fast as possible, set up a safe base of operations for a three man team, assess the damage and report back to headquarters enabling them to supply the necessary aid for the people affected in Haiti.

The massive October earthquake in Kashmir affected one of the highest and most remote places on earth. Difficult terrain slowed the relief effort and the largest scale humanitarian air operations began; tents distributed by aid agencies were not designed to cope with the severe Himalayan winter. Balakot, November 11, 2005. (Photo / Mark Pearson)

The Himalayan winter that followed the Kashmir earthquake in 2005 resulted in millions of survivors left facing the danger of freezing to death in tents. Severe cold waves hit the affected areas, nighttime temperatures fell below zero degrees Celsius and heavy snow had fallen. Minus-10 degrees Celsius had been recorded in Balakot and Muzaffarabad, two of the worst hit towns in Northern Pakistan.

On boxing day, 2004, an earthquake in the Indian ocean caused the deadliest tsunami and natural disaster in recorded history, killing 250,000 people in 11 countries, this was the beginning of my journey. Eight months later an earthquake struck Pakistan Kashmir killing 80,000 people leaving millions homeless. Cyclone Nargis struck Burma in 2008, the worst disaster in it's history, killing 160,000 people in one of the most repressive countries on earth. Two years later, the second deadliest earthquake in history struck Haiti. Disasters were happening on a record level, I thought to myself it can't keep going, but it did. Only a year later the most powerful earthquake in Japans history triggered a massive tsunami causing a nuclear incident, destroying large swathes of the north east coast, I was on the next plane.